The Same Christmas, Different Details

First, a quick reminder for all Masses in Advent, Christmas and beyond: please attend Mass online or on CatholicTV if you feel at all unwell or are among those vulnerable to this virus. Even if you think your symptoms are caused by something else, please do not come gather with others in church no matter how much you want to be here! The Archdiocese and the Commonwealth both warned us this week that we need to remind people not to come if they are sick. 

On to more hope-filled news! You have all been most patient in awaiting information on our plans for this Christmas. As I said in this column on November 15, we have been
planning for some time already but needed to wait until now to share the information in case there were any changes in the health rules after Thanksgiving. While you will still need to watch for any last minute changes, below is the plan for our St. Martha and St. Mary Parishes this Christmas. 

The two obvious priorities are (a) providing everyone with opportunities to worship as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, and (b) to keep one another as safe as possible. The
two obvious challenges are (1) making sure we reach out to those who are not comfortable gathering with others this Christmas, and (2) handling the large number of people who might still come to Christmas Masses in our churches. We will continue to address challenge (1) by offering Masses from both churches online, but challenge (2) is more difficult since it is almost impossible to predict how many people will choose to attend Mass in person! Finally, based on my consultations with various groups of parishioners, we also want our Christmas celebrations to provide as much spiritual
strength and comfort as possible, especially this year.


Therefore, we need your help to spread people out over a variety of times on Christmas Day as well as Christmas Eve. We also need you to spread the word to sign-up now to reserve seating: this helps us fit people based on family size, and determine if we need to add more Masses. Please consider attending Christmas Morning 8am in Plainville or 10am in Wrentham, especially if you want to be with a smaller number of people. While most Mass times remain the same, we are changing the times of the typically most crowded ones in hopes this will spread people out. The Cardinal is allowing
Masses to start earlier, so Christmas Eve Masses are at 3pm and 5pm with seating upstairs and downstairs in both churches. We will also celebrate our Collaborative “Mass During the Night” at Midnight in St. Mary church (the state makes an exception to the “stay at home” hours if you are going to worship).  Finally, those who cannot go into church are invited to sign-up for Christmas Mass “Drive-In,” bringing your smart phone or tablet to watch the Mass in your car, and Communion will be brought outside. A schedule is located on this website; sign up now through our website pwc.church special link for Christmas Masses.

We need many volunteers to make this all happen, so please contact your parish office if you are able to help as a greeter, usher, parking attendant, sanitizer, etc. It’s a great opportunity for those attending by themselves to feel more part of the parish family, families to serve together, and students to earn service hours! As you can see, we are
all working together this Advent to “prepare the way of the Lord” by doing everything we can to make this a safe place and strong community of love to experience Emmanuel, God-with-us, this Christmas!